


Everybody's got a job

by MarauderCracker



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Slice of Life, separate settlement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 08:17:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5619910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarauderCracker/pseuds/MarauderCracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life unfolds in the way that life does --restless, uncoordinated, senseless. Raven stumbles and struggles but she adapts to it. She's glad that  she has her people by her side. She's grateful that she has Bellamy by her side. <i>(A series of snapshots of their life in the dropship as they try, again, to make a home out of it.)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Everybody's got a job

**Author's Note:**

  * For [semele](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semele/gifts).



> Marta wanted something with Raven and Bell in an established relationship, battling small difficulties in a separate settlement. She also mentioned that Bellamy ends up as some sort of "official village tailor" and also surrounded by children, which I love, so there's some of that. There are notes about the story/writing/how I feel about this at the end, but for now... I hope you like it!
> 
>  
> 
> [(PD: the post on tumblr is here)](http://queerhawkeye.tumblr.com/post/136507517669/everybodys-got-a-job-a-br-fic)

_**Everybody's got a job** _  
_**Everybody's got a dream** _

 

They sit around the fire almost every night. They talk sometimes --tell stories of the Ark, make plans for the upcoming winter, laugh about failed scavenging trips or celebrate successful hunts-- or they drink in silence and pass the hooch around. Raven doesn't like alcohol, but she always takes one small sip before handing it over. There is a ritual to it, to raising the dirty bottle up and nodding an acknowledgement to her people before the awful booze that Monty's worked so hard on burns her throat. She respects rituals, tokens, amulets. When Lincoln shares bits and pieces of his people's traditions, she listens carefully. She understands that they need to build a sense of belonging just as much as they need to build roofs over their heads.

She watches as the people --her people-- settle into a comfortable routine. They made a home out of this wreckage once, and they are doing it again. From the foundation up, a place that can't be ripped from their calloused hands, where they make their own rules and build their own history. 

At nightfall they build a fire, eat together, pass Monty's terrible hooch around. It's nice. It'd be nicer, Raven thinks as she's trying to find a comfortable position between Bellamy and the tent's wall, if Monty and Nate could just shut the fuck up.

The fire outside is slowly dying out --she can see the light fading slowly through the tent's thin walls-- and almost everyone on the camp has gone to bed, too drunk or tired to stay up past midnight. Harper is on watch tonight, probably wandering the outskirts of the woods, and it sounds like almost everyone else is sound asleep. Almost being the key word.

Raven turns around, buries her face against Bellamy's shoulder, and throws one of her arms over her head. For a few, blissful seconds, all that she can hear is Bell's steady breathing. Then-- "Fuck off, Miller," a drunken laughter, something falling. "You're gonna knock the tent down," Nate slurs --then, a shuffle of clothes and bodies trying to find a place against each other. Raven is almost jealous of Bellamy's alcohol-induced slumber.

She stretches over Bellamy's body and fishes a shirt from the tent's floor. Bell doesn't even stir as she sits up to fold the shirt and drops herself back against him with a huff. The cloth against her head muffles the outside sounds just enough. Tomorrow, she promises herself right before finally falling asleep, she's gonna kick their asses. Maybe, try and move their tent a couple feet further away. Or both.

* * *

 

Maybe because of their life in the Ark --because they rejoice in this almost untarnished sense of freedom and agency-- the Blakes seem unaffected by most of the things that happen around and inside the camp. Raven watches them --Bellamy calmly talking a girl out of a near panic attack when she realizes she's pregnant, Octavia stitching wounds with a blank expression and skillful fingers. Others look up to them --Raven likes to pretend that she doesn't notice that they look up to her too. People flock to help her with her work, come to her first with whatever they've found in the woods in case she'll find it useful, ask her for help with their weapons and advice on how to build traps.

Miller loses two fingers during a hunting trip (pinkie and ring finger bitten off at the second knuckle) and Raven uses scrap metal to build him a prosthetic that still allows him to hold his rifle without major difficulties. Harper gets caught in an old tri-kru trap, and Raven and Octavia follow her yells and swears until they find her hanging upside-down from a tree, furious but unharmed. Octavia and Bellamy kill some sort of giant water snake and it feeds the whole camp for almost a week (Monty asks "you think that it's the same one that tried to eat you?" but Octavia's only answer is a smile, she promises to tell Raven the story behind that soon).

They don't have leaders --they have made a point of it-- but it was Raven, Octavia and Bellamy who first brought up the idea of leaving Camp Jaha. Their voices have weight, and Raven is glad that Bellamy is a good talker. She oscillates between succinct and too dry, Octavia is blunt and impatient, but Bellamy is quick and charismatic, skillful with words and always good with people. During the first months in their camp, Raven never sees him lose his cool. 

She's finishing up a new set of radios, working on the circuits and occasionally eyeing the group of four or five people who are cleaning up their guns in a circle around her. It's past noon --the smell of food and the sound of laughter are already starting to spread across camp-- and she's taken off the brace, sat down on the grass to work more comfortably. Bellamy is by their tent, joking with Harper while he stitches up her jacket sleeve. Raven wraps a piece of wire around a bolt, raises her eyes so she can ask Nathan for the tweezers, and finds that he's standing up, fixing the leather band that holds the prosthetic around his wrist so he can better hold the revolver. Everyone else is looking at him, waiting for a gesture that'll tell them to stand up too. 

She follows Miller's eyes to the gates, and her gut twists unpleasantly. Octavia and Lincoln stand --both with their swords drawn-- blocking the entrance. On the other side of the open gate, Kane is flanked by four armed guards. Raven reaches for her brace, cursing the second she decided to take it off. 

Raven's fingers catch on the buckles, one of the straps is too lose and another is too tight, but she gets the brace on in a couple seconds and Jules rushes to help her to her feet. She looks towards her tent, where Bellamy is still holding Harper's jacket. His shoulders are tense, hands tight around the piece of cloth. Raven isn't sure if she should go to him or towards the gates. She reaches for Miller's arm. "Lower the gun, I'll talk to them."

She walks towards the gates, hyper-aware of the way she's limping and how slow her pace is. They can wait. She can feel her people's eyes on her --Bellamy's eyes on her-- as she stands between Octavia and Lincoln. "You're not stepping into  _my_ camp armed," she says, and the annoyed twitch in Kane's expression fills her with satisfaction. He opens his mouth, as if he were to argue, but seems to think better of it. "Hand over your weapons," he orders his men. He gives up his own revolver last, and Raven accepts it with a smile. 

Raven watches Bellamy out of the corner of her eye --he's pretending to be completely focused on his stitchwork, but his movements are slower than usual and she can see that his legs are no longer idly stretched out, but bent at the knees, feet firm on the ground, body ready to jump to a stand. If they were to turn to him --if she was to turn to him-- and ask for him to talk for the camp, he would. She's got a strong suspicion that he still remembers that one conversation they had almost a year, almost a war ago, that she's made more of an impact on him that she'd like to give herself credit for.  She doesn't turn to him, and everyone's eyes stay fixed on her.

"Food is almost done, we'll talk around the fire," she says, gesturing towards the circle of people that are standing near the dropship, preparing lunch on an enormous metal pot that she built with pieces of a car. They are stirring the food, passing plates around, carrying water from their storage inside the dropship; but the laughter is gone and Raven can feel their eyes on her. Octavia and Lincoln by her sides, she limps toward them. Kane and their guards walk at her pace, as if they didn't dare to step in front of her. 

Food is calmly, steadily distributed across the camp. Raven keeps her brace on, Octavia and Lincoln keep their swords by their sides. Harper comes to pick up two bowls, Monty and Nathan grab food for the four people who are been working with them. Kane seems hesitant to speak up. Sinclair calls for them to pick up their food last and, when Raven stands up, everyone stands with her and each grab a portion for themselves. Sinclair gives her a look that Raven can't quite understand. 

It's tri-kru custom to keep business and politics out of the table, and Raven finds that it's a wonderful tradition. She eats in silence as Octavia tells Sinclair, Miller Sr. and Diggs about the week they spent on a beast's trail (the same they are eating in a stew now, a six-eyed equine that'd wandered near their camp for days, avoiding all weapons and all traps). Sinclair chuckles, promises he'll join their next hunting trip. Raven pretends to look at her food, but she keeps glancing at Kane out of the corner of her eye. 

Only after everyone has dropped their bowls on a pile ("We'll clean them up later," Raven says, because informing Kane that everyone, them included, has to do their work seems important at the moment) does she ask what they want. Kane seems almost relieved to have been finally asked to speak. "We need help. Specifically, we need Green, Sinclair and the grounder. Claire Guzman has been injured with a poisoned weapon and there is no one in Camp Jaha with enough knowledge to find an antidote."

She remembers Bellamy and Miller bitterly saying that Camp Jaha should have been named for Wells, and not for his father. They still sit on nameless ground, on the territory that once belonged to TonDC. Tri-kru's land, Lincoln's home. She looks at her hands for a second, then up at Kane again. "His name is Lincoln," she says. You know that, she doesn't add.

"Yes, I'm sorry. Green, Sinclair and Lincoln. If we do nothing, Claire will die within the next two days." Raven, somewhere at the back of her mind, notes down the fact that Kane's accent is awfully like her own mother's. She nods curtly. 

"We need lead wire, and certain medicine. Sinclair can make you a list before you leave," she says, giving Sinclair a look. He nods, smiles. "You'll bring Claire back here, and we can treat her." She knows that the last is a rather unkind request, but she doesn't hesitate when voicing it. She wonders if Kane understands what she means, understands that she doesn't think them above jailing her people if they go back to Camp Jaha. If he does, he shows no sign of it.

"We'll be back near midnight. Abbie will join us."

They walk behind her, carefully watch their steps as she walks them to the door. Her thigh and hip are starting to hurt from the effort. She hands Kane his gun last and doesn't offer a smile, but she promises him they'll save them food for their arrival. Kane nods. 

When she turns, Bellamy is walking towards her. His hand is warm against her shoulder as they walk together, light on her lower back as he pretends that he's not helping her sit down on the grass where she'd set up her working area. He stays by her side until nightfall and Raven hopes the lingering kiss she gives them before he falls asleep say what she can't. 

(I don't know how you do it. I'm glad you decided to lead. These are our people, and they need us.)

* * *

 

Harper and Mel share smiles while they help with the food. Raven observes them, their playful banter and the way they watch after each other during hunting trips. Harper sits on the grass, slowly untangles and braids Mel's hair as the sun sets over camp. Raven doesn't know when it happens, exactly, but sometime around June Harper takes all of her things to Mel's tent and their respective bunkmates move in together. 

Raven got herself sterilized when she turned eighteen, and she's now glad for it. She watches Reese struggle through her pregnancy, stubbornly trying to work at the same pace she did before even though everyone insists she doesn't have to. The baby's other parent, Jack, helps as much as she allows him to. They are good friends, and they both seem to be happy with the decision to carry on with the pregnancy, but they are not together. Raven watches them trying to figure out how their lives are going to change after Reese gives birth. The baby will be born at the beginning of winter, so Raven decides that the first proper shelter will go to them. 

Octavia and Lincoln spend some nights away from the camp --in Lincoln's shelter in the woods, Raven imagines-- and usually go on patrol together. They spar on the grass, sometimes with their bare hands and some with their swords, and small crowds gather to watch them fight. Raven notices that their bodies seem to know each other by instinct, that they know the other's moves and tricks like a second language. 

When they arrived, carrying their things on their backs and looking over their shoulders in case Camp Jaha decided that they wouldn't let them leave, the sleeping arrangements were barely discussed. Raven vaguely remembers that Bellamy offered to help setting up her tent. Maybe she told him to stay, maybe he asked. She's not sure. In any case, he stayed.  

It wasn't until a few days --maybe a couple weeks-- later that Raven started to remember who shared their tent with who. It was useful information in case the camp was attacked or anyone got sick. Some combinations she'd guessed beforehand, and Monty and Nathan sharing a tent didn't catch her by surprise. She knew they'd become close friends after-- They'd become close friends, and she saw the slow shift in their dynamic too. 

She wonders if people notice all those things about her, too. She remembers Finn, every now and then. She rarely ever dwells on her fling with Wick. She thinks of Bellamy a lot. 

Bellamy's hands are soft and caring when he puts them to healing actions. He stitches wounds and shirts, helps with carving wood and planting seeds, lay reassuringly on his sister's shoulder or burn like hot metal against Raven's hips. He brushes his knuckles with hers as they walk past each other, ghosts his fingers over her cheekbone before fixing a loose strand of hair behind her ear, presses his thigh against hers when they sit side by side in the circle around the fire. 

She watches his hands as he unbuckles the straps that hold the brace to her leg. She'd rejected his help at first, even if her entire body ached when she bent to loosen the strap near her ankle, but she doesn't bother anymore. He says "let me" and she lets him. 

* * *

 

Winter is cold. That's a stupid statement --of course winter is cold, Raven, come on-- but it's the only thing she can say. It's fucking cold, her hands shake so much that she can barely do any mechanical work and her good foot is fucking freezing. The Ark was cold --the Ark was always cold-- but not like this. The wind cuts her skin and her every bone aches and she feels stiff, angry and useless.

There are too many things she can't do, she realizes. Of course there are things she can't do, she knew this already, but it becomes painfully obvious now. The snow has covered the woods and, without new metal or wire recovered from their little trips around the camp, she's got nothing to build. She can't help with most of the heavy work, and walking in the snow is almost impossible when she can't lift one of her legs. 

No one will say anything, of course --no one blames her for anything-- but she feels guilty all the same. Angry and frustrated, she helps with the cooking and organizes the food rations so they'll last until the bad weather is over. Harper and Miller still go hunting when the snow gives them a break, Monty climbs up the trees around the camp to check on the traps they've set up, Bellamy and Octavia stash wood inside the dropship, Sinclair and David Miller walk miles to the frozen river and come back with blocks of ice so they'll have water. And Raven --Raven carries food and bottles of water from here to there, organizes and reorganizes all of their resources, climbs up and down the dropship's stairs until her good leg gives up on her and she can't walk anymore. 

The first month of winter is uneventful. Bellamy and Lincoln work with the fur and skin that they've gathered during the summer, and they make coats and blankets for everyone. Raven starts working on bows and arrows with whatever spare wood she can find, and it almost makes her feel useful again. In the spring, she promises herself, she'll figure out a way to collect solar energy so they can keep the dropship's heating system working during the long weeks without sun. 

The yelling starts when she's cutting meat. She's been at it for a while, cutting thin strips that they can salt and stash like Lincoln has taught them. Mel is clearing out some of the snow that fell last night, just enough so they can walk from the gates to the dropship and the greenhouse that Monty's been working on, even though another storm is already starting to form above their heads. A third path, Raven notices, goes right up to hers and Bellamy's tent. There is a knot forming in her throat, but any change to feel guilty or grateful is interrupted by Octavia's voice.

"There are people at the gate! Tri-kru!" she calls. Octavia looks at Lincoln, then at Raven. Raven struggles to stand up, slips a little on the wet grass. As she makes her way to the gates, Lincoln and Octavia climb up one of the walls so they can take a better look at the strangers. Raven hears voices speaking trigedasleng. Lincoln calls back to them. 

"They're five children, eight adults. Two of them are elders. They're seeking refuge from the storm." Lincoln informs, looking down at Raven from where he's held to the wall. Octavia lets herself fall and lands next to her. "They are only carrying a couple swords, they don't seem hostile," she tells Raven. 

Raven leans on the wall to rest her good leg, looks up at Lincoln. "What d'ya think?"

"I say we let them in," Lincoln answers, shooting another look at the people outside. There are whispers on the other side, just intelligible enough for Raven to know they are an expression of relief. She gestures for Lincoln to get down. 

"I'll help with the gate."  

After the strangers have left their few weapons in Octavia's hands, Raven and Lincoln lead them to sit around the fire. Other people are already rushing to find them blankets and collect all the food that was left from last night's dinner, and Raven feels something like warmth spreading through her shaky hands. Bellamy comes carrying the jackets and coats he'd been working on last.

After they've managed to stop their teeth from chattering and their kids have fallen asleep around the fire, the tri-kru explain the nature of their circumstances. All the people in the camp who understand any trigedasleng join their circle, curious to hear how a dozen people from a tri-kru settlement hundreds of miles up the river ended up at their gates in the middle of a storm. 

The tri-kru speak a different dialect of trigedasleng than Lincoln's --they roll the r's like Raven's mom did, and she recognizes a few isolated words-- but they can understand each other just fine. One of them --a young woman who's lost three fingers to frostbite already-- speaks a very rustic English, and the two elders speak Spanish. It doesn't sound like her mother's Spanish, but Raven understands it better than trigedasleng. The newcomers' apparent leader, a woman called Santana, tells their story in a jumble of her particular kind of trigedasleng, some clumsy English and a constant stream of words and sentences in Spanish. 

"Der was a graun shift," she says, her black eyes sad. "De graun se mueve y tiembla often in our stegeda, ba em son más que strik tremors. Shakes. This time, la tierra gave in. Casi todo el pueblo was swallowed by de graun." Raven remembers the holographic depictions of sinkholes they'd studied in Earth Skills as Santana tells them that they were the only survivors out of nearly a hundred people. 

If the rest of the camp ever looks at her for opinion or approval on this matter, Raven doesn't notice. She's offering food and blankets and small expressions of comfort that she might have learned from her mother, trying to ease the awful knot in her throat, to get rid of the thought of ninety lives swallowed down by the merciless Earth without any kind of warning, without a chance for bargaining. Just the idea of it leaves her breathless and terrified. 

Raven feels the fear of death like a claw around her throat, like she feels sometimes when she wakes up sweating, Bellamy's hands soft against her cheeks and his eyes soft and worried looking hers; like she feels sometimes when she's woken up by Bellamy's agitated movements, her own words clumsy and hollow as she attempts to calm him down. 

She looks at this woman, at her shoulders heavy with grief, at her lips like Raven's mother's, at the people that she's fought so hard to keep alive. Around her, without hesitation, the camp makes room for twelve more souls. Bellamy helps carry the kids to the dropship, Monroe walks around with an armful of furs and blankets, Monty and Lincoln insist that they can stay as long as they need. Santana tells Raven, "Tes son buena kru, yongon. Mochof.

The snow starts falling again around midnight, and Raven tightens her arms around Bellamy's waist.

* * *

 

Summer is for building. Their camp has grown in the past months: the refugees arrived first, Reese's twin children soon after. Two men who'd learned the art of healing from Lincoln showed up at the beginning of spring, looking for a place to spend the night, and never did leave. Summer, Raven thinks as she learns about Santana's skull tattoos and starts speaking trigedasleng more often, is for growing.

Since the children arrived, the camp has been filled with music. Arrorrós that talk about a mother's love or about monsters that live in the woods; cheerful little songs that teach kids about the different animals and which fruits they can or can't eat. When the kids grow bored of them, Bellamy teaches them songs from their childhood in the Ark. Raven thinks of her own mother, the soft murmur of "pajarito que cantas en el almendro, no despiertes'a mi niña, que'stá durmiendo" and her own sleepy curiosity as she asked "what is an almendro, má?" but she doesn't teach this song to anyone.

Bellamy, Sinclair, Lincoln and Monty are constantly surrounded by kids, which Raven doesn't envy in the least. Those four are kind and patient in ways that she doesn't even begin to understand, ways that she doesn't care to learn (she tells herself). She watches them --Bellamy sews slowly so that he can show the steps to two little boys who are trying to copy his stitches-- as they walk around the camp with one or two kids always at their heels, and laughs to herself. She doesn't want tiny hands interrupting her work on the dropship's ruined circuits, or to constantly answer children's questions while she's trying to focus on the solar panels, but kids are hilarious to watch from afar.

They work on proper shelters --tiny, square huts that might one day grow into small houses-- and Raven is forced to accept her own limits more often than she'd like. She's the designer and the engineer: she welds locks and brings the solar panels to life, organizes the work through loud yells, soft encouragements and half-serious insults. But she has to let others carry the wood planks, move the rocks that they are using to strengthen the bases, climb up to the roofs to install the panels. She stubbornly carries as much weight as she can, but metal scraps and water buckets alike are taken from her hands by Miller, Monroe or Bellamy every time she gets distracted. 

A tiny girl called María, a great fan of Bellamy's tales about gods and queens, often hangs around Raven and silently watches her work. She doesn't intrude, but sometimes Raven catches her organizing the bolts and nails or carefully examining the wires nearby. María hums a tune that sounds like one of Raven's childhood songs as she follows her from hut to hut. Raven hums along.

* * *

 

Raven shifts, kicks the sheet away with her good leg and rolls so instead of lying half over Bellamy she's lying next to him. He follows the movement with his body, turns to his side and throws an arm over her waist without waking up. Their window is covered by a thin piece of cloth --good for keeping any dangerous insects away, useless as soundproofing-- and the noises making their way in are making it impossible for her to fall asleep. Or it might be the heat. Raven groans. 

"Can't sleep?" Bellamy mumbles, breath hot against her forehead, eyes still closed. There is just enough light coming from the fire that she can see the dark lines under his eyes. Nathan's loud laughter echoes all the way from his and Monty's hut to theirs. 

"Just the heat, Blake. Get some rest."

**Author's Note:**

> Marta is the best and most beautiful and I really wanted to write a fic worthy of the best and most beautiful... and I don't think this is it. I'm not unhappy with it --actually, I really like some of the writing-- but it didn't turn out the way I wanted it, and it doesn't look like any extra writing or rewriting will fix that. It ended up being too much about Raven and too little about Raven and Bellamy, and the original comedic tone I intended is nowhere to be found. I hope y'all still liked it (I specially hope Marta liked it) but I'm 100% open to any criticism and if you think there is something specific I can add to give more substance to the story, I'll appreciate the input.


End file.
